Video feature: Breaking through neonatal diabetes

27 July 2009

We spoke to Professors Andrew Hattersley and Frances Ashcroft about their research into diabetes, and met some people affected by the condition whose lives have been transformed as a result of this research.

Neonatal diabetes - a rare but severe form of the disease - used to mean a life of daily insulin injections and strict diet monitoring, often from birth. Now, however, many patients can take well-known drugs called sulphonylureas instead.

This transformation in their lives is due to the research of Professors Andrew Hattersley and Frances Ashcroft, who found that the condition was caused by a genetic mutation disrupting a critical potassium channel involved in the insulin secreting pathway and that sulphonylurea drugs could restore the channel's normal behaviour.

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Running time: 5 min 16 s
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